In an excerpt of the story posted today on the Harper’s website, Wasik says his experiment, which began more than two years ago in Manhattan and spread to much of the world, including, of course, San Francisco, reached “its consummation this summer in the clutches of the Ford Motor Company” (in the form of Ford’s Fusion Flash Concerts campaign, designed to lure younger buyers).

While it’s an interesting (but debatable) idea that Wasik had this conclusion in mind from the get go, he’s also ensured himself a buzz by taking a nice highbrowy stab at the “hollow hipster culture” and herd mentality that allowed flash mobs to be so successful.

Consider the generational cohort that has come to be called the hipsters — i.e., those hundreds of thousands of educated young urbanites with strikingly similar tastes. Have so many self-alleged aesthetes ever been more (in the formulation of Festinger et al.) “submerged in the group”? The hipsters make no pretense to divisions on principle, to forming intellectual or artistic camps; at any given moment, it is the same books, records, films that are judged au courant by all, leading to the curious spectacle of an “alternative” culture more unanimous than the mainstream it ostensibly opposes.

He also compares them to children who, when safely ensconced in anonymous groups, are more likely to steal Halloween candy.